


Edelweiss

by tatecorrigan



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Cheedo/Morsov if you squint, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-04
Updated: 2015-10-04
Packaged: 2018-04-24 17:08:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4928002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tatecorrigan/pseuds/tatecorrigan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>By her hand, he is lifted up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Edelweiss

She slides her fingers underneath the pale faces of tiny flowers, petals still heavy with dew in the morning sun, and tilts them upward to show him. He nods, and smiles, if only to see her smile, her eyes warm and tender on him for a moment before returning to the blooms. She fusses over them anxiously like they are Pups; and they are, in a way. Small white-faced things in need of soft touch, a gentleness so foreign to the rough, chapped hands of a War Boy.

His hands are large, and clumsy with fragile things. Fire and metal he knows well; he has the strength to bend pipes and wires, the fortitude to keep hot steel together when an engine wants to fall apart, the dexterity to shape weapons and deploy them with ease and power. He can finely craft explosions, work an intricate death, but in the face of tender growth he is helpless.

How many times had his touch been too harsh for new green shoots, bruising them when he only meant to feel them tickling his palm? How many times had he crushed young leaves with the careless fall of his boot? Unaware of his error, his callous damage, until his ears had pricked at her soft gasp, the quiet intake of her breath, and a small hand landed on his arm, leading him away from the wild field of destruction and back to the path, of gentle correction and forgiveness and encouragement.

At first he roiled with anger, raging at the offense of plants growing where they may, where his errors were inevitable and hurtful. How could they ever hope to survive if they insisted on growing like that? How could they hope to blossom, throwing their tendrils where his boots would break them?

Her white-haired sister had only shrugged. “We’ve planted them where they will have room to grow. We can’t be angry when they do.”

She had nodded in agreement. “We just have to be careful.”

Careful, careful, careful. And oh, he is so careful, so very full of care. He would destroy everything, burn it all down to the ground, a second Death of the World, if only to take away the damage he has done. He would cut off his heavy fingers, his awkward limbs, if only to not hurt the things she loves, but she insists that he remain whole. She will not let him, will not allow him the only thing he knows how to do, only reminds him that creation is better than destruction, though it is slower and harder. Instead she tasks him with the greater challenge of _taking care_ , to be aware of his movement and the strength waiting in tensed muscles beneath his skin, to know that he could cause so much hurt and to choose, instead, to help.

And so he does. The skin of his hands, once stained by grease and gunpowder, takes on the pigment of the earth. Long coated in clay, his back sweats through and turns pink, then brown. His pants are muddied from raw black into hues of mud and sand and dust, and he crawls into his bunk each night pulling rocks and seeds from his pockets. His favorite he keeps: a smooth, dark stone that reminds him of her eyes and the shine of her hair.

As they rest one morning among the rows of growing green things she asks him if it is better now, than it was. In answer he smiles, and pulls the stone from his pocket, where he has kept it for a dozen days. He rubs his thumb over it and feels its warmth. He thinks about her soft, gentle hands cradling white flowers, encouraging soft young things to grow, and says yes.

She puts her hands around his face, tilting him toward the sun.


End file.
